
- Mac draw functions how to#
- Mac draw functions driver#
- Mac draw functions code#
- Mac draw functions free#
- Mac draw functions mac#
Dedicated graphics hardware provides the server.
Mac draw functions driver#
The framework and driver combine to implement the client portion of OpenGL, as shown in Figure 1-4. OpenGL in OS X implements the OpenGL client-server model using a common OpenGL framework and plug-in drivers. When content is associated with a window, the implementation creates whatever resources are required to allow OpenGL to render and display images. Allowing multiple contexts allows the state in one machine to be changed by an application without affecting other contexts.Īssociating OpenGL with the graphic subsystem usually means allowing OpenGL content to be rendered to a specific window. A rendering context holds all of the data stored in the OpenGL state machine. Instead, OpenGL expects each implementation to define an interface to create rendering contexts and associate them with the graphics subsystem. OpenGL provides a rich set of cross-platform drawing commands, but does not define functions to interact with an operating system’s graphics subsystem. OpenGL Relies on Platform-Specific Libraries For Critical Functionality Applications should be designed to minimize copy overhead. Copying, modifying, and transmitting parameters to the server adds overhead to calling OpenGL. The data that the client copies is often reformatted before it is transmitted to the server.
Mac draw functions free#
Therefore, an application is free to change memory it owns regardless of calls it makes to OpenGL. For example, if a parameter points at an array of vertex data stored in application memory, OpenGL must copy that data before returning. When an application calls an OpenGL function, the OpenGL client copies any data provided in the parameters before returning control to the application. OpenGL guarantees that commands are executed in the order they are received by OpenGL.
Mac draw functions how to#
See OpenGL Application Design Strategies for more information on how to design your OpenGL application. OpenGL applications should be designed to reduce the frequency of client-server synchronizations. Some OpenGL commands implicitly or explicitly require the client to wait until some or all previously submitted commands have completed. If OpenGL required all commands to complete before returning control to the application, then either the CPU or the GPU would be idle waiting for the other to provide it data, resulting in reduced performance. An OpenGL client may also buffer or delay execution of OpenGL commands.


Figure 1-3 Graphics platform model OpenGL Commands Can Be Executed AsynchronouslyĪ benefit of the OpenGL client-server model is that the client can return control to the application before the command has finished executing. With this hardware configuration, the OpenGL client executes on the CPU and the server executes on the GPU. Figure 1-3 shows a common arrangement of CPUs and GPUs. For example, all Macintosh computers ship with dedicated graphics hardware that is optimized to perform graphics calculations in parallel. Figure 1-2 OpenGL client-server modelĪ client-server model allows the graphics workload to be divided between the client and the server. For example, the server and clients could be on different computers, or they could be different processes on the same computer. The nature of the client, the server, and the communication path between them is specific to each implementation of OpenGL. The client delivers drawing commands to an OpenGL server. When your application calls an OpenGL function, it talks to an OpenGL client. OpenGL uses a client-server model, as shown in Figure 1-2. To understand how OpenGL fits into OS X and your application, you should first understand how OpenGL is designed.
Mac draw functions mac#
This chapter provides an overview of OpenGL and the interfaces your application uses on the Mac platform to tap into it. Figure 1-1 OpenGL provides the reflections in iChat OS X provides a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that Cocoa applications can use to support OpenGL drawing. These frameworks use platform-neutral virtual resources to free your programming as much as possible from the underlying graphics hardware. OpenGL for OS X is implemented as a set of frameworks that contain the OpenGL runtime engine and its drawing software. OpenGL is available to all Macintosh applications. The responsiveness of the windows, the instant results of applying an effect in iPhoto, and many other operations in OS X are due to the use of OpenGL. The reflections built into iChat ( Figure 1-1) provide one of the more notable examples. You can tell that Apple has an implementation of OpenGL on its platform by looking at the user interface for many of the applications that are installed with OS X.
Mac draw functions code#
To create high-performance code on GPUs, use the Metal framework instead.
